Though small in its geographical dimensions, Inchcolm is rich in historical and archaeological associations. In proof of this remark, I might adduce various facts to show that it has been at one time a favoured seat of learning, as when, upwards of four hundred years ago, the Scottish historian, Walter Bower, the Abbot of its Monastery, wrote there his contributions to the ancient history of Scotland;[17] and at other times the seat of war, as when it was pillaged at different periods by the English, during the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.[18] For ages it was the site of a monastic institution and the habitation of numerous monks;[19] and at the beginning of the present century it was temporarily degraded to the site of a military fort, and the habitation of a corps of artillery.[20] During the plagues and epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it formed sometimes a lazaretto for the suspected and diseased;[21] and during the reign of James I. it was used as a state-prison for the daughter of the Earl of Ross and the mother of the Lord of the Isles[22]--"a mannish, implacable woman," as Drummond of Hawthornden ungallantly terms her;[23] while fifty years later, when Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was "decernit ane heretique, scismatike, symoniak, and declarit cursit, and condamnit to perpetuall presoun," he was, for this last purpose, "first transportit to St. Colmes Insche."[24] Punishments more dark and dire than mere transportation to, and imprisonment upon Inchcolm, have perhaps taken place within the bounds of the island, if we do not altogether misinterpret the history of "a human skeleton standing upright," found several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic walls.[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St. Columba,--and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his own alleged dwelling-place,[26]--devoid in its history of the usual amount of old monkish miracles and legends. The Scotichronicon contains long and elaborate details of several of them. When, in 1412, the Earl of Douglas thrice essayed to sail out to sea, and was thrice driven back by adverse gales, he at last made a pilgrimage to the holy isle of Aemonia, presented an offering to Columba, and forthwith the Saint sped him with fair winds to Flanders and home again.[27] When, towards the winter of 1421, a boat was sent on a Sunday (die Dominica) to bring off to the monastery from the mainland some house provisions and barrels of beer brewed at Bernhill (in barellis cerevisiam apud Bernhill brasiatam), and the crew, exhilarated with liquor (alacres et potosi), hoisted, on their return, a sail, and upset the barge, Sir Peter the Canon,--who, with five others, was thrown into the water,--fervently and unceasingly invoked the aid of Columba, and the Saint appeared in person to him, and kept Sir Peter afloat for an hour and a half by the help of